Report: Amazon “Kindle Fire” To Be Announced Wednesday

If the rumors are to be believed, Amazon will step into the tablet fray on Wednesday with something called the “Kindle Fire” -- a customized Android slate which may pose the first real threat to Apple’s dominance with the iPad, thanks to the ecosystem the e-tailer has built for apps, movies, TV shows, books and music.

TechCrunch is reporting that Amazon will use their special event on Wednesday, September 28 to reveal their long-awaited tablet dubbed the Kindle Fire. Although CEO Jeff Bezos is expected to show off the device on stage, shipments aren’t expected to begin until the second week of November.

We can hear you now: “Another tablet claiming to dethrone the iPad?!” -- and on the surface, the Kindle Fire doesn’t look like much. The seven-inch slate resembles the BlackBerry PlayBook, which is no coincidence, with TechCrunch claiming “it was designed and built by the same original design manufacturer (ODM), Quanta.”

Why on Earth would Amazon want to release their product in the shadow of a loser? “They wanted to get the Fire out there in time for this holiday season so they outsourced most of it as a shortcut,” TechCrunch explains. (It should also be noted that for all of its faults, the BlackBerry PlayBook hardware has largely been greeted with praise.)

That dubious decision aside, the otherwise ho-hum specs (customized Android 2.1 with a TI dual-core OMAP chip assumed to be clocked at 1.2GHz) hide the real value of the Kindle Fire, which is the content. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Apple has built an entire ecosystem around the same principle, and no one is as well positioned as Amazon to go head-to-head with Cupertino on that front.

On Monday, Amazon announced it had struck a streaming deal with FOX to add more content to its fledgling Amazon Instant Video service, which is free for Amazon Prime customers who pay $79 per year for the company’s unlimited two-day shipping service. When the deal kicks in this fall, Amazon will offer more than 11,000 movies and TV shows, including the classic The Wonder Years which makes its debut on digital.

Couple Amazon Instant Video with Amazon MP3, Amazon Appstore and the already thriving Kindle service, and the Kindle Fire makes a compelling offering -- especially if the e-tailer bundles a year of Amazon Prime service into the purchase price, as TechCrunch believes they will, which is predicted to fall between $250 and $300.

The only downside we can see is that the iPad isn’t likely to get that sweet Instant Video app...